Witness to 9/11: From Maiden Lane to a New Purpose
Witness to 9/11: From Maiden Lane to a New Purpose
On the morning of September 11th, I stepped off my bus into the sunshine, thinking it was a good day to be alive. Hours later, I was fleeing Manhattan as the world seemed to collapse around me. This is my story from 59 Maiden Lane — what I saw, what I felt, and how that day ultimately led me to enlist in the U.S. Air Force.
Witness to 9/11: From Maiden Lane to a New Purpose
I stepped down the stairs of my Transbridge bus and was immediately embraced by sunlight and the warmth of the early day. The morning was perfect — late summer in the mid-70s, not a cloud in the sky. It was a good day to be alive.
Every morning that bus dropped me at the World Trade Center, and I’d make the four-block walk east to my office at 59 Maiden Lane. September 11th, 2001, began like any other day — ordinary, almost idyllic. But ever since, I can’t see a sunny September morning without thinking of that day.
I was on the 32nd floor when the first plane hit at 8:46 a.m. At first, we all believed it was a small Cessna. Work even went on for a bit. We had our morning meeting, talking about positions to sell to clients, while smoke and flames poured out of the North Tower up the street.
When the meeting ended, people gathered at the big window looking west. That’s when I saw something that will never leave me: people leaping from the upper floors, their arms and legs flailing as they fell.
At 9:03 a.m., we watched in real time as Flight 175 smashed into the South Tower in a ball of fire. In that instant, we knew. This wasn’t an accident. It was an attack. The office emptied quickly as we filed down the stairs. Out in the street, people stared upwards in disbelief. No one moved. No fight, no flight. Just shock.
My instinct was to get out. I didn’t know where to go, so I just started walking north. As I passed NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital, I saw gurneys lined up for what felt like a mile — prepared for casualties that everyone knew were coming. The weight of the day sank in.
By the time I reached Midtown by subway, WFAN was playing from every store that had a radio. As I kept moving toward my destination — the west side shoreline, where ferries were carrying people off the island — the news kept coming in, each report like another blow. At 9:37, the Pentagon was hit. At 9:59, the South Tower collapsed — something no one thought was possible. Just three minutes later came word that another hijacked jet, Flight 93, had crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back. At 10:18, the President authorized the military to shoot down any planes still in the air. And then, at 10:28, the North Tower fell.
One catastrophe after another, piling on so fast it felt like the world was ending. I remember feeling like my head was spinning with dread; what was coming next?
Later, standing on the New Jersey side of the Hudson, I looked back at the black cloud swallowing Lower Manhattan, combat jets carving vapor trails above. It was surreal. Eventually, I sat on a rock in someone’s front yard until my dad picked me up.
In the days and weeks that followed, Manhattan was covered in missing persons flyers. Everywhere you turned, there were faces — mothers, fathers, sons, daughters — taped to walls, lampposts, and fences. At the bus terminal, I remember staring at board after board of police officers and firefighters. Heroes who had run up the stairs while the rest of the world was running down.
And I kept thinking back to that moment at the window — watching people leap from the towers. They went to work that morning and never came home. Their families never got to say goodbye. The absence they left was a void no one could ever fill.
It’s easy to think people are awful these days — self-involved, always looking to get ahead at someone else’s expense. But September 11th remains a powerful reminder that there are still those among us who willingly put their lives on the line so that others may live. That truth deserves to be remembered as much as the tragedy.
On the ride home that evening, I was still in shock. I knew the world had forever changed that day. Just a few weeks earlier, down at Long Beach Island, I had joked with my sister that nothing interesting ever happened to me. How wrong I was. September 11th not only shattered that belief — it upended my life and set me on a completely different trajectory.
In the weeks that followed, I remember the American flags. I remember the unity. For the first time, I felt the strength of being part of something larger than myself. That feeling stayed with me, strong enough that I chose to enlist in the U.S. Air Force. It gave me a new purpose — one I never could have imagined while standing on Maiden Lane, watching the towers burn.
On my September 23 walk, the forest announced its changes loud and clear — walnuts thudding down in a mast year, mosquitoes in last-call mode, pawpaw perfume gone, and late-blooming smartweed still holding on. These abundance signals remind me that the woods don’t whisper their shifts; they proclaim them.
The Air Force told me I was going to learn Korean. I never imagined it would change the trajectory of my life. From the warmth of shared meals to the depth of words like han, language became more than communication — it became a new way of seeing the world.
A reflection on how a simple Dad’s Advice slide deck became the seed of this blog — a place to store wisdom, life lessons, and love for my kids to return to someday.
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